Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The paper below is circulated on the Internet only. I have submitted it to quite a few academic journals but all the editors have found it too risky for them to publish. Although the theory put forward is one that various Jewish scholars favour, it is still a bit politically incorrect to have a Gentile saying it!The paper may be used, reproduced or circulated in any way anyone wishes without charge, let or hindrance from the author as long as it is reproduced in full and not altered in any way. For any other usage of the paper permission is required from the author. The paper may however be freely quoted and cited as long as appropriate acknowledgment of authorship is made. The version of the paper below is the update of June, 2012 but the first version of the paper was submitted in 1974.John Ray (Jonjayray@hotmail.com)

SEMITISM AND ANTISEMITISM: SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM AUSTRALIA IN SUPPORT OF THE STEIN/GLOCK HYPOTHESIS

J.J. Ray

University of New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

Although all types of antisemitism are overgeneralizations, it is important to note that there is more than one type and source of antisemitism and that not all types are equally pernicious. It is the extreme examples of antisemitism that are dangerous and they are most safely seen as sui generis (requiring study in their own right). Contrary to the popular impression, extreme antisemitism has been in recent centuries mostly Leftist but this paper is primarily concerned with non-extreme antisemitism -- widespread but not usually important low-level grumbling about Jews. Social psychology textbooks now describe everyday racism as normal and at times rational. This suggests that some antisemitism too could be rational in at least some cases. Jewish authors such as H.F. Stein and C.Y. Glock have argued to that effect in recent years. To help examine this possibility, some case studies of ordinary Australians are presented which tend to suggest that such people's dislike for Jews is ultimately traceable to a significant subset of Jews acting out the central Jewish belief that they are a chosen and hence superior people. It is suggested that such beliefs lead to a tribal morality which sours business interactions between Jew and Gentile. This in turn suggests that the only relatively safe future for Jews over the long term may be either assimilation or migration to Israel. Another alternative may however be the one adopted by the Parsees of India. Various criticisms of these conclusions are considered.

A LITTLE-KNOWN LESSON FROM HISTORY

Ever since the Pharaohs, Jews have been persecuted. To be a Jew is to be at serious risk of adverse discrimination and persecution. It is arguably the single feature that unites Jews of all eras. Religion once had that role but most Jews today seem to be atheists or something not far short of that.

To academics like me such a unifying feature cries out for a unifying explanation. Explaining the complexity of reality in terms of much simpler underlying processes is what academics do. But academic caution also requires one to note that things which seem the same on the surface may often not be at all the same underneath and it is my contention that EXTREME examples of antisemitism are sui generis -- i.e. they have to be understood in their own terms and in their own context. For instance, the "final solution" of England's King Edward I in 1290 cannot safely be seen as similarly-motivated to a certain later "final solution". I think, however, that there is nonetheless one generalization about extreme antisemitism in the last couple of centuries that has some explanatory power and I will initially say a few words about that:

The most extreme example of antisemitism in recent times was of course the thinking and deeds of the avowedly socialist Adolf Hitler. Leftist propaganda has convinced many that he was not a true socialist because he violently disagreed with the Marxist notion of class war. But most Leftists in the last 200 years have not agreed with the goal of class war. They want reform that falls somewhere short of that. So Hitler was in fact a fairly normal Leftist in that regard. There are probably few readers here, however, who are ready to unlearn the propaganda they have been fed about Hitler being a Rightist so I refer such doubters to a really thorough exposition of the matter here

And who wrote this?

"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time.... We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development -- to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed -- has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry".

Most people would identify those words as the words of Hitler but they are in fact the words of that great hater, Karl Marx. So I think that does lead us towards one useful generalization about extreme antisemitism in the last 200 years or so: It is characteristically Leftist. By Hitler's time, antisemitism in particular, as well as racism in general, already had a long history on the Left. August Bebel was the founder of Germany's Social Democratic party (mainstream Leftists) and his best-known saying is that antisemitism is der Sozialismus des bloeden Mannes (usually translated as "the socialism of fools") -- which implicitly recognized the antisemitism then prevalent on the Left. And Lenin himself alluded to the same phenomenon in saying that "it is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people" but "the capitalists of all countries." For more on the socialist roots of antisemitism see Tyler Cowen's detailed survey here.

And when we contrast the socialist Hitler with people who really were conservative, the difference in treatment of Jews could hardly be more stark. In the clearly more racist 19th century to which Hitler belonged intellectually (He was born in 1889), the British Conservative Party made a flamboyant Jew -- Disraeli -- a most honoured and influential Prime Minister. Could that be a greater contrast with the gas ovens he could have expected under Hitler? And it was of course Conservative party member and eventual leader Winston Churchill who was Hitler's most unrelenting opponent.

And Leftist antisemitism was only briefly interrupted by the aftermath of Hitler's defeat and horror at the holocaust. The most virulent expressions of non-Muslim antisemitism are now once again emanating from the Left -- sometimes but not always in the form of "anti-Zionism" (Translation: Hatred of Israel). If Hitler were alive today, his attitude to Jews would make him once again a fairly mainstream Leftist. He would certainly get on well with America's famous Grinning Peanut (See here and here for details of Peanut's addled thinking).

And it is no mystery why Leftists should be antisemitic. Hatred of success and prominence in others -- envy -- is the major driving force behind Leftism and Jews do have the perhaps unfortunate attribute of tending to be prominently successful in all sorts of ways. And the remarkable exceptionalism of modern-day Israel would make it hated by the Left whether it was populated by Jews or Calathumpians. But it IS mainly populated by Jews so extreme antisemitism gets a new lease of life.

I will not go on to discuss further the characteristically Leftist nature of extreme antisemitism as we have seen it in the last couple of centuries because I think that the two links I have given above do a pretty thorough job of that. And there is what will probably be a surprising comparison between Hitler and American Leftists of his day here.

Before I leave the topic, however, I think I should quote a summary (originally published in the Leftist magazine "Dissent") of where Leftists at the beginning of the 21st century stood with regard to Israel:

"If one is not at least a serious doubter of the legitimacy of the state of Israel (never mind the policies of its government) and if one does not dismiss everything American as a priori vile and reactionary, one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called "the left." There has not been a common issue since the Spanish Civil War that has united the left so clearly as has anti-Zionism and its twin, anti-Americanism. The left divided, and divides, over Serbia, over Chechnya, over Darfur, even over the war in Iraq. There are virtually no divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and over the essence of the United States.

And guess from what era the quote below comes. It is is from a prominent American Democrat -- at one time a candidate for the Democrat Presidential nomination.

When we asked him what made him so sure the *** administration was headed in this direction, he replied: "You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers."

It sounds fresh out of the 1930s with its reference to "New York money people" (rich Jews) but it was in fact a public comment by retired General Wesley Clarke in the year 2007 -- commenting on the supposedly Jew-run Bush administration. As the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

{And, to pre-empt a Leftist wriggle-out, I should note that Clarke was at the time no fringe figure or ill-educated "redneck". He was in his youth a Rhodes scholar and was later Supreme Commander of NATO. He had for some time been much fawned-over by Democrats. And the comments by Democrat supporters published along with his words above were generally supportive. As an Israeli put it: "I read your posting on Clark's comments to the Huffington Post (or Puffington Host) and the comments of the "progressive" and "enlightened" anti-Semites cheering on Clark's anti-Semitic diatribe and was blown away.}

There are many more examples of the truly insane antisemitism emanating from the early 21st century Western Left here -- in an article by Alvin H. Rosenfeld for the American Jewish Committee.

I now want to move on to my main focus in this article: a look at a much lesser-known type of antisemitism -- antisemitism of a low level "grumbling" sort -- antisemitism that is not at all extreme but which is nonetheless widespread among many modern Western populations.

THE CONTEXT FOR WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW:

I want to make clear at the outset that what I discuss below is a particular type of antisemitism in a particular type of context. What I say is most unlikely to account for ALL types of antisemitism or all contexts. But the type and the context are common ones: "Incidental" antisemitism in a context where Jews are a small minority. I am NOT talking about the sort of people who believe in Jewish conspiracy theories or those who have "studied" Jews. I have a whole separate article devoted to such people. This is, in other words, one of two companion articles.

Also: I do mention it below but I think I should attempt a pre-emptive strike here at popular conceptions of stereotyping. Crazily enough, stereotyping is often stereotyped. People think they know what goes on in stereotyping -- but they don't. As you might expect, there is a very large academic literature in which psychologists have researched what exactly goes on in stereotyping and they find that it is the OPPOSITE of how it is popularly conceived. It is popularly conceived as being rigid and imprisoning and as somehow dictating what people will see and think. It isn't. The truth is that human beings form generalizations very quickly and on the basis of most limited evidence but they also CHANGE their generalizations equally readily and again on the basis of a few impressions rather than waiting for ALL the evidence to be in. Stereotypes are in fact highly flexible and contain what Allport long ago described as a "kernel of truth". They ARE based on (very limited) experience. There are summaries of the academic literature on the subject, complete with full citation details, here and here.

And the generalizations that I discuss below ARE stereotypes -- but in the reality-based sense I have just described: Generalizations based on very limited experience. Such generalizations are however common and need to be addressed. So this article is in fact another contribution to the literature on stereotyping: I look at how one particular stereotype is formed in one particular population type in one particular context.

PSYCHOLOGICAL BACKGROUND ON RACIAL ATTITUDES

It is perhaps encouraging that research into racially and ethnically denominated antagonisms ("racism" for short) seems to be one field where knowledge and understanding among psychologists has undergone steady development and, hopefully, progress. Throughout the 50's, 60's and even later the most common view of racism among psychologists seems to have been the one propagated by Adorno et al (1950) -- i.e that racism was an attribute of sick deviants only and that it was possible to "educate" people out of it. How much things have changed! Now it is a textbook view that ethnocentrism and stereotyping are "universal ineradicable psychological processes" (Brown, 1986. See also Tajfel & Fraser, 1978) and reviews of research into racism now hardly mention the Adorno et al claims (e.g. Tajfel, 1982; Brewer & Kramer, 1985; Messick & Mackie, 1988). Even in 1974 my claim (Ray, 1974, Ch. 46) that racism on some occasions can be in some senses "rational" (have some basis in reality) was something of a voice in the wilderness. Now social scientists generally and sociologists in particular (including sociologists of many different orientations) are quite ready to agree (e.g. Banton, 1983; Moreh, 1988; Wellman, 1977; Brown, 1985; Hechter, 1986; McClendon, 1984) and some go so far as to make the somewhat startling claim that all racism is rational (e.g. Hechter, 1986). Hechter is, however, referring to active racial discrimination rather than mere sentiment so it is perhaps arguable that some rational self- interest has to be mobilized before attitude will be transformed into action.

In the early 1970's I wrote two papers that were essentially field reports of studies I had made among various Australian Neo-Nazi groups. These were published (Ray, 1972 & 1973) in Jewish journals. I also wrote a companion paper that described antisemitism among ordinary citizens in the community. The conclusions of the paper were, however, that antisemitism can on some occasions be rational (have some basis in reality). This, however, seemed to breach a fundamental taboo and meant that the paper did not find a publisher. In fact, the editors of one allegedly academic journal (Ethnic & Racial Studies) completely stopped corresponding with me, presumably because of my reprehensible conclusions. Now that racism generally is widely acknowledged by psychologists as not necessarily irrational or psychopathological, however, it seems that the time might be ripe to extend the same analysis to antisemitism in particular. Below, therefore, are presented the previously unmentionable observations.

Before getting to that point, however, it should be noted that the conclusions I come to are novel only in that they come from a Gentile. Similar conclusions are old stuff among Jewish intellectuals, most notable of whom is perhaps the widely influentual and ethnically Jewish philosopher, Karl Popper (Hacohen, 2000, pp. 304-307).

And they continue to be well-known in Jewish circles. For instance, in his bitter commentary on the controversy in Germany over the performance of the Fassbinder play Der Muell, die Stadt und die Tod, Broder (1986) concludes that antisemitism is an ineradicable human folly that Jews will always have to live with and which is therefore best overt rather than covert (a view also more recently supported by Eugene Volokh). In particular, he concludes that hidden antisemitism is still pervasive in Germany and he clearly views this as the worst sort of antisemitism.

This subsidiary conclusion is rather controversial, however. While the reasoning behind the conclusion is clear enough ("Better the devil you know...."), might it not be said that the era before the Second World War represented a test of where open antisemitism led? At any event, Broder's subsidiary conclusion does seem worth examination and it so happens that the data I gathered in Australia in the late 60's and early 70's do make an examination of it possible. This is because antisemitism still does seem to be fairly openly acknowledged in Australia (Yes, Australia, not Austria). Beswick & Hills (1972) found that among a random sample of Australians 47% agreed with the statement that, "One trouble with Jewish businessmen is that they stick together and prevent other people from having a fair chance in competition". Naturally, racism is generally regarded as socially undesirable in Australia at the present time so we must regard this 47% as the lower bound of antisemitism in Australia. In a secret ballot, the level would certainly be much higher. At any event, there are a lot of overt antisemitic beliefs in Australia. Broder would be pleased.

Two present-day Jewish social scientists who present much the same view that I do are H.F. Stein and C.Y. Glock. See Stein (1977, 1978 & 1984), Quinley & Glock (1979) and Glock, Wuthnow, Piliavin & Spencer (1975). Glock worked under the auspices of the anti-defamation league of B'nai B'rith and what he found was that antisemitism was highest where Jews were most visible: No Jews, no antisemitism. Since prejudice must have an object, this is not perhaps an intrinsically surprising finding and similar findings have in fact been reported for non-Jewish minorities (e.g. Fossett & Kiecolt, 1989; Mitchell, 1968) but it does raise the possibility that a significant subset of Jews in some way cause, stimulate or at least collaborate with prejudice. Glock himself deals with this deduction by in essence resorting to the old "jealousy" explanation: Many Jews tend to be successful in various ways and success always invites envy. This would appear to be essentially a version of the popular "economic rivalry" explanation for racism (Banton, 1983; Hechter, 1986; Fossett & Kiecolt, 1989) but the empirically very limited explanatory power of such theories should be noted (Studlar, 1979).

Stein, by contrast, is more innovative. In his various works he puts forward the theory (cf. Volkan, 1985 & 1988) that Jews NEED persecution for their survival. He posits that the quite unprecedentedly long time that Jews have survived as a distinct ethnic group needs an extraordinary explanation and that the best explanation is that they survived not in spite of but because of the persecution that they have always unconsciously invited. Persecution leads to ingroup cohesion just as external threat encourages unity among citizens of nation-states. As it is a common modern observation that the State of Israel holds together today only because of the Arab threat (See Eisenstadt, 1986, for an account of just some of the tensions within modern-day Israeli society) Stein's hypothesis has considerable contemporary context to recommend it. Although Stein's version of the hypothesis is extreme, could there not be something characteristic or at least common in Jewish behaviour which at least enables or collaborates with prejudice? Jews do tend to have a distinctive culture which is proudly maintained in one way or another by at least a substantial minority of them and many writers (e.g. Park, 1950; Manheim, 1960; Rokeach, 1960; Byrne, Clore & Smeaton, 1986; Walker & Campbell, 1982) maintain that people with different values, beliefs and attitudes will tend to be disliked -- so we could entertain a "culture clash" explanation of antisemitism even if we do not wish to accept Stein's psychoanalytic musings. Some examination of how Jews are generally perceived does therefore seem needed.

Before proceeding any further, however, I should perhaps enter the caveat that I personally find utterly ludicrous any idea that there is such a thing as a "typical" Jew. As far as I can see, from Biblical times to the present day, Jews must be the most fractious (i.e. furiously divided among themselves) people in all of history. Unity is definitely not one of their attributes as a people so any idea of a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" could hardly be more laughable. If such a conspiracy were ever attempted, there would immediately be a whole heap of other Jews furiously denouncing it! I see much truth in the saying that where there are two Jews there will be at least three points of view! Nonetheless the idea that some things are "typically" Jewish is widespread and needs to be examined. That such views might have originated from observations of a significant subset of Jews and then been overgeneralized to all Jews is not an inherently unreasonable proposition. And I might say at this point that for my purposes I find the definition of "Jew" contained in Israel's "Law of the Return" adequate. In summary: "A Jew is someone who sees himself as a Jew".

METHOD

I attempted to fill the need for an account of how Jews are perceived in the population at large by making use of case studies or "participant observation". Adorno et al (1950) and Stein (1977 & 1978) both used case studies for their purposes so the methodology obviously has its attractions. Its open-ended character is probably the chief of these. Many writers have highlighted the shortcomings of the laboratory- or survey-based methods that psychologists and sociologists generally use (e.g. Bruyn, 1966; Campbell, 1976) and have exhorted us to make more use of alternative sources of data so the data to be presented below would seem to deserve at least some examination.

The cases I describe below are simply all the people I personally met over a period of about seven years whom I heard making low-level antisemitic utterances. I also encountered some less casual antisemitic utterances but I have described those commenters elsewhere.

I have long been interested in the study of antisemitism, as my early articles on Neo-Nazism (Ray, 1972 & 1973) attest. Whenever therefore I happened to hear any antisemitic utterance, I took some interest in it and endeavoured to find out more about the person concerned and how they felt about Jews. Being in most ways a fairly conventional-seeming WASP Australian, I may have been in a better position to draw out people on the topic than a Jewish social scientist might have been.

Although the cases therefore are not deliberately selected in any way, they may of course have been influenced by the fact that they are drawn from people met in the course of my own social and business life. Academics probably tend to mix with people not too dissimilar from themselves so any one circle of acquaintances can hardly hope to be in any sense representative. There is also of course the difficulty that not every antisemitic utterance is encountered in circumstances where one can follow it up with a detailed discussion of the sentiments behind it. The cases described are, in other words, only those where I could assure myself that the antisemitism was seriously meant and where I could find out how the person justified it. I must also enter the caveat that for none of the people described was their antisemitism an important thing or even something that they often thought about. If it had not been for my interest in antisemitism, they would probably in fact never have been "picked up" as antisemites. This "low-level" antisemitism is, however, the form that antisemitism generally seems to take in Australia today: People may have a general dislike or suspicion of Jews but this does not imply any desire to persecute or oppress them. This may be a reservoir of sentiment with frightening political potential in certain circumstances but as it stands at the moment it is simply a dislike of Jewry much as one might dislike people who drive flashy cars or part their hair in the middle.

And I hope I do not need to stress at this point that, like much else in psychological studies of attitudes, predicting antisemitic behaviour from antisemitic attitudes would be extremely perilous. The attitude/behaviour gap has been well-known in studies of racism at least since the work of La Piere (1934) and has been amply confirmed since (See e.g. Crosby, Bromley & Saxe, 1980; Rule, Haley, & McCormack, 1971 and Stephan, 1985). Perhaps the most spectacular "gap" of that type however is the example of one Richard Milhous Nixon. President Nixon was much prone to antisemitic slurs in private but was exemplary, if not philosemitic, in his actual treatment of Jews. And I hope that no lover of Israel will ever forget Nixon's ferocious defence of Israel in its hour of greatest need. So any assumption of evil in the people I describe below could well be the reverse of the truth if it is deeds rather than words that count.

THE CASES

The first case I wish to describe is in fact one I have described in a previous study (Ray, 1973). I will call him "E.S.". It will be worthwhile to repeat the description: E. is a very successful businessman of a quite entrepreneurial kind with an attractive wife and three equally attractive children. He was at the time in his early 40's and although of Australian Irish descent, was brought up an atheist. A Communist in his earlier days, he is now politically very much to the Right. He has a formidably well-informed and catholic devotion to classical music. He is a great lover and exponent of Australian working-class traditions and language, perhaps largely because he worked in a highly unionized blue-collar occupation in his younger days. Nazism to him is utterly contemptible and 'sick'. For all that his dislike of Jews is probably rivalled only by his dislike of Aborigines (Australian blacks). Jews to him are 'scabs' -- people who take what they can get with no accompanying sense of obligation or duty to the others who make their opportunities possible. Aborigines he condemns for what he sees as their whining disinclination to work and their tendency to "lower the standards" of their community. Both offend against the universal Australian working-class credo of being "fair dinkum" and allowing a "fair go". He sees both as grasping -- the one by deceit and untrustworthiness and the other by indolent whining. In standard literary English we might say that E. dislikes insincerity and failures of consideration for others. He can relate many vivid anecdotes to show that his "prejudice" is not prejudice at all -- i.e. he condemns after and because he has become to know those of whom he speaks. His profusely exemplified philippics against Jewish and Aboriginal moral defalcations are worthy in fact of an independent literary record. Coming as he does from the "outback" (Australia's sparsely populated and semi-desert inland where many Aborigines still live in a quite primitive state), I have seen him use his first-hand knowledge of Aborigines to devastating effect in informal debates with urban Left-leaning intellectuals. Here then is a racially critical man whose attitudes it is hard not to respect -- whether or not we agree with them. Let it be clear, however, that his ideology of everyone deserving a "fair go" would make him a resolute and formidable opponent to anyone who proposed or practiced any oppression of others on the basis of their race or creed. I hope I have made it intelligible that he would oppose his daughter marrying a Jew but would oppose Belsen and Auschwitz much more.

Similar in many ways was U.Q. U. is a short, stocky, grey-haired businessman and company director with a large house in one of Sydney's "better" suburbs. He is the sort of person whom one would imagine would often be called (ironies aside) "a real Christian". He is characterized by a grandfatherly sort of gentleness and kindness that make him the soul of generosity, consideration and humanity. He did in fact have a definitely Protestant upbringing in an Australian country town. I know personally of instances where he has sacrificed immediate monetary gain simply for the sake of having satisfied customers. He would definitely rather have a reasonable return on his money and the feeling that he had served his customers well than a big return and customer animosity. He was, for all that, a prosperous and successful businessman. His humane business policies he would justify as being in fact good business. He could see that accepting less than what he could get for what he had to sell gave him a stability of customer demand that more rapacious policies would militate against. He felt in fact that he was in the long term no worse off than someone who went all out for a "fast buck" -- and in addition he had the reward of other people's liking and esteem. Given, however, that his business was, like so many today, one where a typical purchase was large so repeat custom would be the exception rather than the rule, the loss or gain entailed by having or not having repeat custom must have been fairly marginal. Certainly he could quite plausibly have acted rapaciously -- with the rationale that you will not see them again so soak them while you have them. It should by now be very apparent that one thing U. would be very contemptuous of was precisely such rapacity. It became apparent also that he had seen enough to conclude that such behaviour was more to be expected of Jewish businessmen than of others. Speaking to me in condemnation of a person whom both of us knew to be engaged in an enterprise that would result in considerable financial gain if certain customers could be "conned", U. said: "But he's not an Australian, is he? That's what makes the difference." There was no ambiguity concerning what ethnic origin this particular "non-Australian" might be presumed to have. U, then, would not explicitly or in blanket terms condemn Jews -- he was far too forbearing a man to do that -- and the suggestion of persecuting them he would receive with horror, but for all that the direction his expectations lay as far as Jews were concerned was quite clear. Being the sort of man he was, it is hard not to credit his judgment with some accuracy. It certainly cannot be dismissed as mere self-justifying prejudice.

Next is O.I. O. was an attractive, Australian-born divorcee of wholly Irish ancestry. She had one child and was at the time in her late 20's. Of obviously high intelligence, she supported herself in some style entirely out of the proceeds of various speculative business deals which represented both her occupation and principal hobby. She completed a couple of years at University but was not interested enough to complete a degree. She was raised as a Catholic but is now an agnostic and sent her daughter to a prestigious Church of England private school. She could to a degree be described as moving "in Society". She has one or two friends who are Jewish and would if formally asked say all the right things about how absurd prejudice is and how people must be treated as individuals. Nonetheless, among familiars it is quite commonplace for her to say such things as: (speaking of her daughter's school, where she is a committee member) "We tried to keep them out but eventually we had to let some of the little Jewesses in." I have, by the way, every reason to believe that the "we" was far from being a royal plural. Her dislike of Jews seems to be justified by her in terms of their separatism and their being in general " not very good types". It should be said that she is herself rather self-centred and aggressive -- compassion is certainly not her strong point. Nazism is not exactly abhorrent to her -- rather foolish and irrelevant. Her attitude towards Jews is certainly one of the least important things to her in life.

Another person in this category was M.K. M. is a Hungarian by birth but migrated to Australia after the second world war. He was at the time about 30 and single. He speaks faultless English and in his social life associates somewhat with students and others of a conventionally Leftist outlook. He is a rather entrepreneurial importer by occupation and has in the past clashed with the officers of Australian customs to the point of having a warrant out against him. His dislike of Jews is quite strong and he will defend it even to his radical friends in terms of his own actual experience of their rapacity and dishonesty in business. Since his business lies in a traditionally Jewish field, he should have had some experience on which to base his judgment. He will not even concede that Jews have to be taken individually. He has found them "all the same".

As was suggested above, even among Leftists antisemitism is far from a remote possibility. Q.N. was a divorcee of about 30 and an active worker for one of Australia's Leftist political parties. A tall, blonde and very attractive woman of Catholic nominal background, Q. worked in a responsible position with a firm in the heart of Sydney's financial district. Her attitude towards Jews is an obviously well thought-out one. She greatly dislikes Hungarian Jews in particular: "Even their own people (other Jews?) don't like them". Her complaint is that in their business dealings they are completely untrustworthy and know no honour. For money they would sacrifice every human and social value. So deleterious has been their influence on the standards of the business community that she is in favour of deporting the lot of them. To her Leftist friends she says: "When I was at University I thought as you do but now I know differently. I have to deal with these people every day." Whatever her own attitude to Jews, however, she would regard Nazism as the epitome of everything she opposed.

Another young woman who would see herself as radical and "progressive" was M.E. M. was in her late twenties, had a pleasant personality, was of presentable appearance and happily married. She was of Protestant nominal background and worked as a teacher. Her recipe for solving any financial crisis is: "I will have to go out and kill a fat Jew". Since she was a very gentle-natured and caring person, this was, of course, not a literal proposal. It was, in fact intended as facetious. For all that, she did have a definite dislike of Jews -- based on their presumed personal characteristics of being money-hungry, insincere etc. I gathered that the attitude, as well as the formula quoted is something she inherited from her family but it is nonetheless strongly held by her, and she will defend it as realistic even to horrified Leftist friends.

Perhaps a final person in this category is X.H. X works in a semi-professional field where he has ample contact with Jews. He was in his mid-twenties and unmarried. He is Australian-born and of nominal Protestant background. He is very sociable and good-humoured and is well-liked among his large circle of "mates" (male friends). His dislike of Jews is as something automatic. There is no apology for it or expectation that his friends will disagree with him. It is based again on his seeing Jews as generally untrustworthy and always ready to "take you down". As the very epitome of a young, beer-drinking Australian who is nonetheless keenly intelligent and successful in a necessarily creative occupation, his impressions are hard to dismiss.

All the impressions given so far were written up in the early 70's very much as given above. I present them in such a way to show that, being written before the Stein/Glock work, they represent an independent confirmation of it. From later experience, however, examples such as those given above could readily be multiplied. I can, for instance, think of two young men with higher degrees in Humanities fields whom I have heard express general dislike of Jews on much the same grounds as repeatedly emerged in the cases quoted above.

None of the people described above were saints by any means but they all seemed to be people of normal goodwill and it is their normality and sanity which is the central datum of this article. There were also some antisemitic people I met who seemed unusually ill-willed but they all fitted into one of the categories described in my article on more serious antisemites -- which see.

SOME INFERENCES FROM THE OBSERVATIONS

Perhaps the first impression one gains from what is reported above is that Broder seems to be right. Antisemitism seems to be fairly open in Australia and is also far from virulent or even important there. Whether the second is a consequence of the first, however, remains debatable.

Another interesting feature of the above cases is that they were all gathered (between 1968 and approx. 1973) in Sydney -- a city with a substantial Jewish business community. This is in some contrast with Brisbane -- another large Australian city I have spent many years in but where Jews seem very few and far between. Brisbane did have neo-Nazis but not any low-level general population antisemitism that I could detect. The only person from Brisbane that I could have included above was in fact an American now living in Australia who himself traces his antisemitism to business experiences with Jews in America (He is, incidentally, a notable Brisbane welfare worker, admired for helping blacks and homosexuals). The present observations are, then, very much consistent with the observations by Glock et al (1975): Antisemitism is highest where Jews are most present.

What the "cases" above actually say about their attitudes is also consistent with the Stein/Glock observations. Australian low-level antisemites assert consistently that it is actual experience with Jews that has made them antisemitic. Are we then to take seriously what these people say? Is actual association with people who define themselves as Jews aversive for many non-Jews? If so, why? I submit that we ignore what these generally young people say at our peril. As I have been at pains to point out, the claims they make are not the isolated claims of eccentrics. They are mainstream views. I believe therefore that we should accept that a significant subset of Jews do often behave in ways which are offensive to such people. We must enquire, therefore, just how this comes about.

The obvious first response is to say that Jews generally maintain a different culture and people will dislike anyone who is different. There probably is some truth in that. The psychological literature is replete with studies showing that those most attractive to us are those who are most like us in beliefs, attitudes, values, dress etc. (e.g. Rokeach, 1960; Byrne, Clore & Smeaton, 1986; Walker & Campbell, 1982). Trivial though it may seem, even strange hats can alienate. That is far from the end of the story, however. Why, for instance, are not redheads generally disliked? They are certainly a small minority and their difference is an obvious one. There have even been suggestions that they are characteristically more intelligent and more emotional. Yet the idea of a Pogrom against redheads is merely amusing. We must conclude, then, that it is not difference per se which is disliked but rather certain types of difference. What we have to ascertain is why some types of difference (such as being Jewish) are disliked while other types are not.

One of the reasons why people do not dislike redheads is that few other characteristics can in fact reliably be associated with red hair. As should be evident, a considerable diversity of people have no such difficulty with Jews. Can this be explained away by invoking the "stereotyping" formula? Do people come to their contacts with Jews with a stereotype in their heads into which Jews are fitted willy nilly? Note that if there were only such stereotypes involved, we should expect precisely the opposite generalization to that which was in fact found. If the stereotype were just that and not a true description, then people not having actual contact with Jews should hold with greatest assurance to the stereotype while those who did have most contact with Jews should see it often enough contradicted to lose faith in it. The reverse seems to be true. In fact what I observed was that people seem to start off with (given the terrible events of recent history) a sympathetic attitude towards Jews which is reversed as they actually come to know Jews. Among people who do not know Jews, there is no "stereotype". The "stereotype" is postjudice, not prejudice: It only emerges as the fruit of experience with Jews.

SOME RATHER DISTURBING HISTORICAL PARALLELS

Although the above observations have concerned people for whom their antisemitic views are completely incidental, it would seem that in some cases, similar processes CAN lead on to really serious antisemitism.

And in fact a reading of any biography of Wilhelm Marr -- who in 1879 invented the term "antisemitism" (Antisemitismus) and published a very popular and influential antisemitic tract ("Der Sieg des Judenthums ueber das Germanenthum" -- "The victory of Jewry over the Germanic peoples") will show that he had exceptionally close and frequent contact with Jews -- even marrying one. And as Lindemann (2000, p. 188) says of 19th century antisemites generally: ""an astonishing number of them had at some point in their lives not only extensive contact with Jews but also remarkably positive experiences with them -- close friends, respected teachers, even lovers and spouses!" So what I observed has much historical precedent.

Indeed, according to the extensive account of the matter given in "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") much the same is true of Hitler himself. Mein Kampf is unreliable as objective history but there can be little doubt that it is good psychological history -- i.e. it records Hitler's own history as he saw it. And what he says is that in Linz -- where he grew up -- there were few Jews and he saw them at that time as no different from other Germans. So when he moved to Vienna he was horrified at the antisemitism of much of the Viennese press. As he says:

"For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation".

Long before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, however, Hitler despised the destructive and divisive side of Marxism and when he found that practically every preacher of Marxism that he encountered in Vienna was a Jew, he began to see Jews as bent on the destruction of the German people he loved. In other words, for him too, it was experience of Jews that led to his dislike of them. And he describes his conversion to antisemitism as "a great spiritual upheaval" -- i.e. he abandoned his previous "cosmopolitan" (tolerant) views only with great reluctance.

The conventional account of the origins of Hitler's animosity towards Jews is that his rejection from the Vienna Art Academy (in which Jews were prominent) embittered him. But that is not remotely what he says in Mein Kampf. He does not even mention the word "Jew" in connection with the Academy. He says that the Rector rejected him from the painting school because his main talent and interest was in architecture -- a judgement with which Hitler himself emphatically agreed!

An obvious question that arises from the historical cases I have just mentioned is why observations of Jews in those cases led on to really serious antisemitism when the normal effect is incidental antisemitism.

As I intimated initially, I think such cases have to be treated as sui generis and I do not know enough about Marr and others to comment with any certainty. The case of Hitler, however, is clear-cut. As any reader of Mein Kampf should know, Hitler was a fervent German nationalist (like Engels and other Leftists before him) and the great love affair of his life was a love-affair with the German people (Volk) as he saw them. But in the aftermath of WWI, Germans were furiously divided among themselves and apparently on the verge of class-war. That grieved Hitler deeply and to salvage his romantic view of his Volk he had to attribute the divisions among Germans to outside forces deceiving them rather than as something intrinsic to Germans themselves. And since the active preachers of class war at the time were often Jews, the scapegoat was obvious. So it was Hitler's nationalist passion that transformed him into an active antisemite. It must be noted, however, that nationalism and patriotism are normally NOT related to racism (Ray & Furnham, 1984). Hitler's case was sui generis.

{Since it is still considered authoritative in certain circles to trace ideas to Marxian origins, I might note in passing that the non-necessary connection between nationalism and antisemitism can be seen in the writings of Marx and Engels themselves. Marx was the furious antisemite -- which Engels more or less went along with -- and Engels was the fervent German nationalist -- which Marx more or less went along with. It took Hitler to combine both orientations with great enthusiasm. Those less familiar with Marxian writings should find a browse through the archives here to offer good confirmation for the summary I have suggested.}

SEMITISM

It must be noted again that psychological research has now made the view of stereotypes as being rigid and mentally imprisoning quite obsolete (Brown, 1986; McCauley, Stitt & Segal, 1980). Stereotypes are now known to be as fluid as they were once thought rigid. Stereotypes are, in other words, highly responsive to new information about their target. See also Bayton & McAlister (1966) and Stein, Hardyck & Smith (1965) and summaries here and here. At this point, then, it seems we must do something that has probably been rather resisted in the past. We must look at the characteristics not only of those doing the discriminating but also at the characteristics of those discriminated against. What is there in many self-defined Jews that might generally offend today?

I would like to suggest that the explanation might be found (cf. Stephenson, 1940) in what one might call Semitism (or, as Stein calls it: "Anti-Gentilism") -- the well-known rejection of "Goyim" (Gentiles) by some Jews themselves. In fact, if we go by Brown's (1965) "codability" theory, Semitism is much more important to Jews than antisemitism is to Gentiles. English does not have a single word for "Jewish female", let alone a contemptuous one, but the Yiddish term "shicksa" (meaning roughly "Gentile bitch" and synonymous with "prostitute" in German) is well-known. In explaining antisemitism a very humble reference source (Pears Cyclopaedia, 1971) puts it all rather well: "Jews tend to form a closed society and incur the suspicions attached to all closed societies within which social contacts are largely limited to members; marriage outside the group is forbidden or strongly disapproved of and the preservation, among the orthodox, of cultural and religious barriers tends to isolate them from their fellow citizens. Discrimination, hateful as it is, does not come from one side only and it is such barriers as these that help to maintain an old and cruel folly".

It seems then that the offence some Jews give may stem from what Sumner (1906) long ago described and which is only too familiar to anthropologists: The tendency to have different standards for the in-and the out-groups. In such a "tribal morality" ingroup members tend to be treated in highly ethical ways but outsiders are "fair game". Many Jews would seem to see themselves as part of such a "tribe". To swindle an unperson is no crime at all and if one is challenged in the matter, a wealth of justifications and rationalizations is available under the general formula: "Look what they did to us" or Shylock's "If we are wronged, shall we not revenge?" Such behaviour can even be pious: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". It matters not that the individual upon whom the revenge is wreaked has done nothing wrong; where groupthink exists, the individual Jew need find little moral difficulty in justifying exploitation of Gentiles. The sad point is that even a member of the most primitive tribe could justify murdering members of other tribes in a similar way.

Such a tribal morality among a significant subset of Jews, then, very well explains the constant refrain from my informants about the dishonesty and untrustworthiness that they encountered when dealing with individual Jews. Those who live by a tribal morality, however, would seem to overlook the enmity they must arouse among the "unpersons" among whom they move and whom they treat less ethically than they might. Even an unperson knows the difference between good treatment and bad. And even unpersons can fire bullets and wield bayonets.

What is proposed here, then, is that the very "We" feeling that is prized by many Jewish community leaders is the thing that most endangers that community. Hitler showed what the effects of having the enmity of those among whom you live can be. The price of earning the enmity of your neighbors can be a terrible one indeed to pay. Is any pride or any temporary material gain worth it?

The last thing that should matter is to whom we trace the blame for this state of affairs. Persecution breeds "We" feeling and the Catholic Church persecuted Jewry for over a millennium, but then institutional Jewry had brought about the slaying of the Catholics' God. What a towering insult and injury that must have seemed! Not to slay a father, not to slay a King, but to slay a God! To me as an atheist of course the Catholic (and early Protestant) abhorrence of Jewry seems hopeless superstition and ignorance. But then so does the common Jewish view (shared by 70% of Israelis in 2012) that they are a chosen people. It is easy for a Jew to think of his own people as guiltless. When we realize that the Catholic and even the Nazi also think of themselves as guiltless it becomes apparent how pointless the ascription of guilt is. If instead it is the future towards which we are oriented, we may well live to see that future. A tribal morality is something that the future cannot justify and something that threatens the future of those that adhere to it today.

The sympathy that has gone out to Jewry after the Hitlerian horror became fully known could well lull Jews into a false sense of security. One could be tempted to identify all antisemitism with Nazism and give it no heed. To do so would be to squander a dearly bought breathing-space. The sympathy will one day run out as memory fades and public criticisms of Jews will then no longer be suppressed. It takes no wisdom at all to know what will follow then.

I am not, of course, suggesting that Jews themselves are unaware of the importance of developing goodwill and all sorts of ties with non-Jews. It is even my impression that Jews are unusually philanthropic once they have made their money. I am suggesting in fact that it is mainly in or perhaps only in business dealings that the tribal morality often emerges. It is only in the ultimately vital (survival-related) field of economics that the crunch comes. As I once heard H.N. say: "Socially they're lovely but in business......!". Certainly it has been my strong impression that it is mainly people who have had business dealings with Jews who dislike them. This for many will simply be contact as the customer of a Jew but even here a certain contempt by a Jew for his customers may be and is perceived. This is most usually where the Jew is in a limited competition position. A shopkeeper in competition with others cannot afford to be contemptuous but a landlord where housing is scarce may well be so able.

Let me elaborate a little on how many Jews may generally come to offend. Cut-throat though it may be, I think that there are nonetheless many ways in which business in our society works under ethical restraints. This is, of course, simply a matter of long-term self-interest. If a man's word is as good as his bond, it does obviate the need for bonds -- with all their attendant rigidities and inconveniences. The way one can (at least in Australia) simply ring up his stockbroker and order a purchase of shares is surely an instance of this. The transaction is one requiring trust and the broker is taking a risk. Given the moment to moment movement of the market, however, the advantage of preserving this trust and its attendant convenience are obvious. Verbal agreements are as convenient and advantageous as they are legally difficult to enforce. I gather from Q.N. that their ability to breach verbal agreements and even deny that they had been made is one of the things which makes Jews particularly offensive and indeed makes impossible the conclusion of such agreements. By saying that they "lower the standards" of the business community, she is referring precisely to the general lack of trust that the activity of some Jews engenders. Since not being able to trust the people with whom one works and deals must be singularly unpleasant, the cause of the situation quite reasonably must attract opprobrium. To me it seems obvious that not all Jews can be like this but I can also see that one of the things that keeps people behaving ethically towards others they have to do with is the need for the goodwill of those others. Indeed, there is no doubt that monetary advantage will frequently be sacrificed to the maintenance of goodwill. If a Jew sees himself as being apart from the "Goyim" he deals with and as being "chosen" and demonstrably better than they are, if he also looks for his social rewards and support to others than his "Goy" business associates, then this need for goodwill may indeed be lacking as a constraint on unethical behaviour. For a large monetary advantage he may be willing to sacrifice goodwill. This is made even more likely by the possibility that Jews seek security in money. In many ways this is an adaptive and realistic thing for a persecuted people to do and it may have served well in the past -- particularly where, for religious reasons, goodwill was simply unavailable. It does explain the contemptuous epithet "money-hungry" so frequently applied to Jews in Australia. Ultimately, however, the only security is the goodwill of one's fellows. Money did not help Hitler's millions of victims. Any outlook that has us think of others as not our fellows is personally dangerous.

This is not of course to deny that superiority and inferiority or similarity and difference do exist. In fact it is to assert that Australian Jews do appear to be economically more successful than others and I personally think that they are the intellectual elite of the human race. Nor am I necessarily saying that economically successful people everywhere should hide their success or deny it. What I am saying is that we are at risk unless we see our success and our values as merely our own. If I, raised as a Presbyterian, am successful and honest, it does not mean that all Presbyterians are successful and honest --any more than it means that Catholics must necessarily be unsuccessful and dishonest. The advantage of treating each man on his individual merits, then, is that it means that resentments can only ever have small targets. My success will be resented by those who do not share it but I as an individual am not worth getting heated about. If however I am known for my identity as a Jew the target may become not me but Jewry -- and that is (and often has been) a target big enough to get heated about.

In an age of nationalism and a rediscovery of ethnic roots, my plea that people see both themselves and others as individuals rather than as group-members may seem passe and redolent of the sort of liberal idealism that died with the '60s. I may indeed be advocating the impossible and the long rejected. Did not the Jews of Germany travel a long way along the assimilation road? Where did it get them? Nonetheless, if my analysis is correct the safest long-term alternative for Jews to the abandonment of group-identity that I urge may be emigration to Israel -- and the perils the Israelis face are only too well-known.

Some readers by now must be troubled that I seem to be accepting as true what antisemites say. Is that not naive? Is a thing true just because people believe it? Was not the absurd blood-libel believed about Jews for many centuries against all evidence to the contrary (Ben-Sasson, 1974)? In reply I basically must say that what I report is testimony of personal experience rather than hearsay and rumour. The difference seems important. It is certainly important in law. And dismissing my informants as "antisemites" simply prejudges the question of their veracity. When there are so many like them such prejudging and dismissal is quite simply incautious.

OBJECTIONS TO THE ABOVE ACCOUNT

I am sure that what I have said above will not be universally persuasive. Most people, many Jews no doubt particularly, have well-entrenched views about the matter already. But there are a few objections that I have not so far dealt with that may be worth addressing.

The first I have in fact already dealt with implicitly but maybe I should be more explicit: Many Jews will refer to their own knowledge of other Jews and note how many philanthropic and generally admirable Jews there are. That is seen as a decisive objection to the stereotype I have discussed. It is not, of course. Even scientists rarely form their views on ALL the evidence (See here if you doubt it) and the man in the street is not even interested in ALL the evidence. He forms his impressions based primarily on his own limited experience and that is the reality we have to deal with and which I have tried to deal with.

A second objection is that Jews who live in predominantly Christian communities see enough variety in the inhabitants of those communities to be very wary of any generalizations about Christians -- so surely it is perverse that members of predominantly Christian communites make adverse judgments of Jews in general.

There are many replies to that. The obvious one is that many Jews DO seem to make adverse judgments of Christians -- as seen in the way a big majority of Jews vote for the Democratic party in the USA -- even though at least since Nixon the best friends of Israel have been Republicans. Why do they do that? Apparently because of the strong religious polariztion of the two parties. The Republicans are these days the Christian party. 2000 years of persecution of Jews by Christans of all sorts has a lot to do with that, of course, but what we see here seems to be a rare example of stereotyping in the popular sense -- i.e. a judgment that is NOT changed in response to changing reality. That should surely give some pause for reflection. If there is anything rigid and pathological in this whole area, the best candidate for it would seem to be the way so many contemporary American Jews reject their contemporary best friends: Evangelical Christians.

Be that as it may, however, the main point is that the way Jews see things in a gentile country need have nothing in common with how gentiles see Jews in a gentile country. Living in a place where Jews are a majority and their diversity can be readily seen should lead to more cautious views about Jews compared to living in a place where Jews are only occasionally encountered. But it is the latter circumstance that is discussed in this article.

And although the adverse stereotypes of Jews that I have discussed are generally unimportant to the people holding them, we have seen in Hitler's Germany how such views can cause the actions of really serious antisemites to be treated with indifference. And given the rising hostility to Israel in particular and Jews in general now emanating from the Left, a resurgence of serious antisemitism is not only a possibility but a fact. Where it will lead only a great optimist would dare to specify.

THE PARSEES

Perhaps, however, I have so far been too pessimistic. Perhaps there is a safe choice for Jews other than Israel or assimilation. I have for some time been a keen student (Ray, 1982 & 1986) of an ethnic group that does seem to manage to have it both ways: The Parsees of India. Sometimes called "the Jews of India", the Parsees have set an example which does, I believe, give hope.

The Parsees are descendants of Zoroastrian true-believers who fled the Persian empire at the time of its conquest by Muslims. They took refuge in what is now the Indian State of Gujurat and have Gujurati as their native language to this day. Perhaps because of their typically Iranian energy, they have prospered mightily in India. They founded India's steel, nuclear, computer and airline industries and one of their sons (Rajiv Gandhi) even became Prime Minister of India for some time while another (Sam Manekshaw) headed the Indian Army. In spite of India's generally abject poverty the Parsee living standard is more or less at a Western level. Their over-representation among the upper strata of Indian society makes any eminence that Western Jews have achieved seem puny by comparison. If "jealousy" is the reason behind the persecution of Jews, the Parsees should be the most persecuted minority on earth. Yet amid the seething hot-bed of religious, racial, caste and communal hatreds that is India, the Parsees have remained unscathed. They are, in fact, somewhat popular. How do they do it?

The answer is rather simple. The Parsees have always been grateful to the host community that gave them safe refuge from the Muslims. Instead of holding their hosts in contempt, they actually tend to appreciate their hosts (no doubt at least in part because of India's considerable and unusual success in resisting Islam). They certainly make great efforts not to offend their hosts (e.g. they tend to avoid eating beef and pork not because Zoroastrianism forbids it but because one offends Hindus and the other Muslims). This has beneficial results at many levels, not the least of which is the interpersonal level. The level that is most visible, however, is the ultimate level when Parsees are deciding what to do with the fortunes that many of them accumulate. Such fortunes are almost always used for charitable ends. Parsee charitable foundations are in fact legendary. Such foundations usually have as their first duty the succour of any needy Parsees but as the Parsee community is very small (a total of around 90,000 souls and falling) Indians generally are also major beneficiaries. The Parsees, in other words, not only say "thank you" but say it very nicely and very convincingly. There is nothing in Zoroastrianism that tells them that they are superior. They are quite endogamous but this is normal and understood in India. In fact, their endogamy seems Indian rather than Zoroastrian. Zoroastrianism teaches that the help of all men is needed in the fight against evil. A fuller ethnography of the Parsees than the few notes given above is to be found in Kulke (1978)

So it seems to me that Jews might just possibly be able to learn from the Parsees. Few diaspora Jews are now religious so religious justifications for a superior attitude towards others are usually not available. It is true that Jewish and Israeli achievements are great in many fields but that is the work of a few individuals only rather than the work of all Jews. So assuming any superiority from that at the all-important level of individual interactions with others is simply arrogating the achievements of others to oneself. There are lots of foolish Jews too, as there are in any group.

Christians have much to answer for if we take an Irish view of history (i.e. that history never dies) but we have all seen in Northern Ireland where an Irish view of things leads. Additionally, if we take a more contemporary view of things, has not the succour given by Christians to the State of Israel been worthy of gratitude? Do not Christians even go against their own interests (e.g. at the time of the Arab oil embargo) to give that succour? I admit that I am drawing a long bow but if most Jews who live among Christians can come to see something in Christians worthy of gratitude then all their troubles will be over. People like gratitude as much as they dislike condescension. Popularity is obtainable but it must be worked for. If people must view themselves as group-members rather than as individuals then the Parsees have shown the safe way to do so.

What I have said immediately above is in effect advice to Jews but I fully recognize that advice is the world's most oversupplied commodity and is often worthy of no respect. I do however feel obliged to point out where in my view the available evidence leads. What others do with my observations will probably be minutely little but I have done all I can to help.

BILLIG'S ACCUSATIONS: AN ATTACK FROM THE FAR LEFT

Unfortunately, however, there is every possibility that the Parsee example I describe above will go unheeded. The defensiveness that the propositions of the present paper engender has already made itself evident. At a time when many published papers seem to go forever unread, the present paper has the distinction that it has twice been attacked in print even before it was published! In the first such instance the Trotskyite Billig (1981) obtained a copy of the unpublished first draft of the paper and was so incensed by it that he plumbed new depths in social scientific debate by implying that I am or was a Nazi. I did of course reply to this outrageous accusation. In Ray (1985) I not only denied it but showed where Billig had got his "information". He was using the published fact (Ray, 1972 & 1973) that I had done participant observation research among neo-Nazis to imply that I myself must be one of them. He seems, however, not to have confronted the fact that he himself has also done apparently rather involved research among neo-Nazis!

My exposition of the extraordinary shallow nature of his reasoning, however, has simply caused Billig (1985) to mount a new and yet more vitriolic personal attack on me and on this paper. That attack surely needs some reply. First, one of Billig's dotty criticisms is that it is in some way suspicious that my research program gave rise to only three publications. I should apologize! Many research programs give rise to no publications whatsoever. It is true that Billig needed a book to record his own observations of British Neo-Nazis while I wrote only journal articles but surely one must accept that journal articles are a perfectly normal and adequate way of reporting research results. Billig may find that I have not given all the detail he would like but that is more characteristic of journal articles than of my specific work.

Billig's next objection to my work is even more pompous. He claims that because I began my research while I was a student, it cannot really have been disinterested research and that I must therefore have had some ulterior motive for it. This is ridiculous for several reasons but let me give at least one: My secondary schooling was interrupted so that I was aged 20 by the time I became an undergraduate. I have however, always been a voracious reader so that before I ever set foot in a University I had already consumed great quantities of pop social science in paperback form (Vance Packard, Margaret Mead, Galbraith, Eysenck etc.). I was therefore even at that time perfectly well aware that sociologists saw participant observation as a powerful and exciting way of finding out about deviant sub-groups in society. When the opportunity arose, therefore, I saw no reason why I should not do some of that kind of research. As Billig rightly observes, however, my work was somewhat unsystematic and lacking in the precautions that a seasoned researcher might have taken. I am not at all ashamed to say that the explanation for this is simply that one cannot learn everything out of paperbacks!

Billig (1985) does however end up conceding that my degree of involvement with Nazis is really "of scant interest". His attachment to ad hominem arguments, however, remains. He goes on to shift his attack to the related accusation that I am antisemitic.

His first point in this new attack is to question my claim that there is a great gulf between Nazism and conservatism (I had noted previously that it was the Conservative Churchill, not the Communist Stalin who refused an alliance with Hitler). Billig does this by quoting my own statement that Nazis sometimes join and are active in conservative political parties. He conveniently overlooks the fact that the Nazis are immediately expelled once the conservatives get wind of what they really are.

Billig, however, also goes on to quote another of my statements to the effect that both Nazis and conservatives are ethnocentric. By this he creates the impression that I think conservatives are racists. This is, however, sleight of hand. While it is true that many social scientists use "ethnocentrism" and "racism" as more or less interchangeable terms, I do not. And Billig knew that: One of the very papers Billig attacks bore the title "Are racists ethnocentric?" (Ray, 1974 Ch. 46). I was using "ethnocentrism" at that time to mean little more than patriotism. There is, of course, now plenty of evidence that both conservatism and patriotism are essentially unrelated to racism among general population samples (e.g. Ray & Furnham, 1984).

Billig then moves on to an attack on me that is based on misleading quotations from the first draft of the present paper. He also quotes the titles of two papers from my book (Ray, 1974) that must sound (and were meant to sound) pretty alarming to most social scientists. I do not, however, here propose to make any attempt to answer these criticisms by Billig in detail. The only real corrective to selective quotations is for people to read the original in full and I believe that my papers must stand or fall on that basis. It is insidious that Billig has largely based his attack on my one paper that has not been publically available but I here remedy that deficit.

I do however wish to answer the underlying criticism that really motivates Billig's cheap shots at my paper ("billig" means "cheap" in German). It is true that the paper does contain criticisms of some Jews. Billig appears to believe that no such criticisms should ever be made. I reject that utterly. No-one is beyond criticism and criticism can be kindly meant as well as maliciously meant. I feel sure that most people reading this paper could not doubt that the criticisms I make are indeed of the constructive rather than the destructive kind. I even attempt the folly of giving helpful advice!

I agree that in view of the tragic events of recent history it could be seen as "insensitive" to speak critically of Jews, but I also believe that such a view is itself clearly racist. I treat Jews like any other ethnic group. I think it not only demeans them to treat them with kid gloves but it runs the risk of creating a fictitious view of reality. The dangers of this can be seen from the Palestinian uprising in Israel. A sort of fictitious image of saintliness has been created around Jews so that when they behave in normal, non-saintly ways there is shock and horror. An unrealistically high standard is set for Israel that is not set for anyone else. That hardly serves Israel well. It is the fruit of not heeding an ancient warning: "He who flatters a man spreads a net for his feet" (Proverbs 29:5 R.S.V.).

So it seems to me that someone whom you really accept is also someone whom you feel free to speak to frankly. By that criterion, I am one of the few social scientists who do really accept Jews. I wish Jews well and feel that honest criticism is the duty of a friend. As Solomon the wise put it so long ago: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy" (Proverbs 27: 6. R.S.V.). The fact that such a duty can be risky I always accepted and Billig's attack on me is evidence enough of that risk. It was in fact because of that risk that I made only desultory attempts over the years to get versions of the present paper into print in the academic journals. There are some ways in which even a tenured academic (as I was) can run the risk of losing ones job and I had to be cognizant of that risk. So the present paper was "back-burnered" for many years. Now that I am retired from academic employment, however, I am in a position to speak without fear or favour. I can only hope that not all readers of this paper will be as hostile as Billig. I can only hope Solomon was right again when he said: "He who rebukes a man will afterward find more favour than he who flatters with his tongue" (Proverbs 28: 23 R.S.V.).

Epilogue:

So at the end of the day, what are my personal thoughts and feelings about Jews in general? A number of responses to that:

1). I DON'T think questions of the above sort are wrong, vain, or simplistic. There is nothing wrong with generalizations as long as we realize that it is is very rare for a generalization to cover all cases. And NO generalization covers all Jews. And basing your judgment of any individual solely on some group that he belongs to falls somewhere between absurd and evil.

2). I think it is absurd to be simply either antisemitic or prosemitic. Like everybody else, Jews have both strengths and weaknesses. And in this article I have not shrunk from talking about what I see as weaknesses. Mature discourse requires cool consideration of both strengths and weaknesses. Given such consideration, however, it is a matter of personal judgment whether, ON BALANCE, one thinks well or ill of Jews. I personally am philosemitic on balance (I am a great supporter of the State of Israel and even put my money where my mouth is by donating to Israeli causes) but I can certainly see that some characteristics often found among Jews might lead others with different values to a more negative conclusion.

3). I think Jews are one of the earth's most politically stupid people. Their talent for siding with their enemies is extraordinary.

4). In other respects, I think Jews are the intellectual cream of the human race and, as such, should be valued as rare treasures. Hitler's depredations were a grievous assault on the human gene pool as a whole. Anything that saves Jews from the haters has my unqualified support.

So does the above make me antisemitic or does it make me a Jew-lover? I have been vigorously accused of both -- but I don't really care. I just try to describe reality as accurately as I can -- in all its messy complexity. Perhaps that is my personal area of weakness and folly. It certainly exposes me to much scorn. I am perhaps fortunate,however, that the scorn concerned troubles me not a bit.

1 comment:

I found your article to be one of the most balanced I have ever come across.Although there is no doubt that antisemitism is blind and dangerous, I also can't understand the blind "philo semitism" of many in the right wing, conservative Christian movement.Having lived and prayed as an ultra-orthodox Jew for many years, I saw first hand the anti-Gentilism that is part and parcel of Judaism.

Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate. And you may not even survive at all. Stalin killed off all the old Bolsheviks.

MYTH BUSTING:

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Just the name of Hitler's political party should be sufficient to reject the claim that Hitler was "Right wing" but Leftists sometimes retort that the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not informative, in that it is the name of a dismal Stalinist tyranny. But "People's Republic" is a normal name for a Communist country whereas I know of no conservative political party that calls itself a "Socialist Worker's Party". Such parties are in fact usually of the extreme Left (Trotskyite etc.)

Most people find the viciousness of the Nazis to be incomprehensible -- for instance what they did in their concentration camps. But you just have to read a little of the vileness that pours out from modern-day "liberals" in their Twitter and blog comments to understand it all very well. Leftists haven't changed. They are still boiling with hate

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

The 10 "cannots" (By William J. H. Boetcker) that Leftist politicians ignore:
*You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

A good short definition of conservative: "One who wants you to keep your hand out of his pocket."

Beware of good intentions. They mostly lead to coercion

A gargantuan case of hubris, coupled with stunning level of ignorance about how the real world works, is the essence of progressivism.

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong - Thomas Sowell

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution" -- George Orwell

Was 16th century science pioneer Paracelsus a libertarian? His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."

"When using today's model of society as a rule, most of history will be found to be full of oppression, bias, and bigotry." What today's arrogant judges of history fail to realize is that they, too, will be judged. What will Americans of 100 years from now make of, say, speech codes, political correctness, and zero tolerance - to name only three? Assuming, of course, there will still be an America that we, today, would recognize. Given the rogue Federal government spy apparatus, I am not at all sure of that. -- Paul Havemann

Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."

It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.

American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant

The Democratic Party is a strange amalgam of elites, would-be elites and minorities. No wonder their policies are so confused and irrational

Why are conservatives more at ease with religion? Because it is basic to conservatism that some things are unknowable, and religious people have to accept that too. Leftists think that they know it all and feel threatened by any exceptions to that. Thinking that you know it all is however the pride that comes before a fall.

The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage

Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth

The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?

The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration

"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters

Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.

A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser

Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes

Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"

"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"

"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)

"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"

During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out

JEWS AND ISRAEL

The Bible is an Israeli book

To me, hostility to the Jews is a terrible tragedy. I weep for them at times. And I do literally put my money where my mouth is. I do at times send money to Israeli charities

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee" Psalm 122:6.

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy -- Psalm 137 (NIV)

Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good. As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more willing and capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable." -- George Gilder

To Leftist haters, all the basic rules of liberal society — rejection of hate speech, commitment to academic freedom, rooting out racism, the absolute commitment to human dignity — go out the window when the subject is Israel.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

Conservatives, on the other hand, could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Diaspora Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

Amid their many virtues, one virtue is often lacking among Jews in general and Israelis in particular: Humility. And that's an antisemitic comment only if Hashem is antisemitic. From Moses on, the Hebrew prophets repeatedy accused the Israelites of being "stiff-necked" and urged them to repent. So it's no wonder that the greatest Jewish prophet of all -- Jesus -- not only urged humility but exemplified it in his life and death

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Karl Marx hated just about everyone. Even his father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought Karl was not much of a human being

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.

Alfred Dreyfus, a reminder of French antisemitism still relevant today

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation

My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)